The Supreme Court’s term is almost over. Here’s what’s left.

Being a high court judge is a very sweet gig.

The Court typically hears about 60 cases a yearplus a little”shadow dossier“cases that receive expedited review. Like school kids, the judges take their summers off — usually wrapping up their pending cases in June and then skipping town in early July.

And the judges are currently in the final stretch before they can enjoy their summer discount. On Wednesday, the court heard the final arguments of its current term. So all that’s left for the justices to do is finish writing their current slate of opinions (along with a mix of concurrences and dissents), before their summer vacations can begin.

Two issues dominate this term’s remaining business: democracy and President Donald Trump. The court has just decided a case that has kicked off another round of Republican gerrymandering in the US South – and it will likely wipe out Black representation in many southern red states in the process. There is two more election cases that come before the justice, peace out for the summer.

The Court will also decide several cases where Trump wants to expand his power and the power of the presidency. This includes some cases where the outcome is predetermined—the Court’s Republican majority, for example, has long settled on the “unitary executive authority“, a legal theory that gives Trump the power to fire almost anyone who leads a federal agency. But the court is also likely to Trump’s claim rejected that he can strip citizenship from many Americans born in the United States.

This term also contains two perennial culture war issues: guns and LGBTQ rights. Gun advocates will probably celebrate two upcoming decisionswhere the Court is likely to take an expansive view of the Second Amendment. Transgender student-athletes, meanwhile, must prepare them for bad news.

On Wednesday, the Court pronounced Louisiana vs. Callaisa most consequential – but not exactly unexpected — decision that neutralizes a provision of the Voting Rights Act that sometimes requires states to draw additional majority-Black or Latino districts. The snapshot of this decision is that between half a dozen and a dozen seats currently held by Democrats of color will likely be held by white Republicans after several red states redraw their maps.

The court will also decide National Republican Senatorial Committee (“NRSC”) v. FECwhere the Republican Party is asking the Court to remove limits on how much money party organizations such as the Democratic and Republican National Committees can spend in conjunction with candidates. This matters because the law allows donors to give much larger amounts to the DNC or RNC than they can give to candidates, so a decision in the GOP’s favor would allow wealthy donors to exert more influence over individual races.

The Court’s Republican majority already has took a flamethrower to US campaign finance lawso that the decision in NRSC will probably matter only around the margins. But the court is expected to use NRSC to remove one of the few remaining limits on money in politics.

And then there is Watson vs. RNCwhere the GOP is asking the judges to potentially destroy thousands of absentee ballots; In recent elections, Democrats have been far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail. In an age of less partisan judges, Watson would have been rejected by a lower court and never heard from again. The GOP’s legal theory is that a 160-year-old law setting the date of federal elections requires all ballots arriving after that date to be thrown out, even if they were mailed before the election — and that somehow no one noticed this restriction on ballot counting until after Trump started claiming that voting by mail is bad.

At oral arguments, however, at least four of the Court’s Republicans appeared sympathetic to the GOP’s arguments Watson. So the case is worth watching for the same reason that coal miners keep a close eye on their canary. If the Supreme Court in the GOP’s cockamamie legal arguments Watsonit is a warning that they will accept other highly questionable legal arguments that favor the Republican Party.

Trump has already lost one major case this term. in Learning resources v. Trump (2026), three of the Court’s Republicans chipped away at their party’s traditional support for free trade and struck down many of Trump’s tariffs. All three of the Court’s Democrats also joined this decision.

Trump will probably lose too Trump vs. Barbarahis challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision granting citizenship to almost everyone born in the US. As Learning resources, Barbara involves an issue that divides the Republican Party, and where Republicans largely agreed with Democrats until Trump came along.

Meanwhile, the president is likely to win big Trump v. Impacta case asking whether Congress can create “independent” federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission or the National Labor Relations Board, whose members may be removed only by the president for negligence or malfeasance in office. The Republicans of the Court are all adherents of the “unitary executive authority“,” a legal theory that asserts that such agencies cannot exist, with one exception. The court already took notice of it last year members of the Federal Reserve may be protected from presidential firingand it is likely to reaffirm this decision later this year.

There is some uncertainty about how the court will rule Mullin v. do and Trump against Miottwo cases asking whether the Trump administration followed the proper procedures when it stripped “temporary protected status” from Haitian and Syrian citizens living in the United States. If the court rules in favor of these foreign nationals, it will mean that some citizens of very dangerous countries may stay in the United States for a few more months.

But the legal issue in do and Miot It’s purely procedural, and no one really questions the Trump administration can deport these individuals if it succeeds in the process. Such a victory for these Syrian and Haitian claimants would be only a minor defeat for Trump.

Guns and the Second Amendment

in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. brown (2022), the Supreme Court announced s widely derived framework which now governs Second Amendment cases. A lawyer defending a gun law must point to a law from around the time the Constitution was drafted that is similar to the law they are defending today. If five judges deem the old law sufficiently consistent with the new law, the new law is upheld. Otherwise it is beaten.

The judges struggled to explain how similar the two laws should be, or in what ways the new law should resemble the old one, and several judges complained that this new framework was unworkable, and that they did not know how to apply it. Indeed, in a 2024 opinionJustice Ketanji Brown Jackson cited a dozen different judicial opinions — some of them written by Trump appointees — that complained that, in one judge’s words, brown caused “insanity” because it “does not provide clear guidance to lower courts on how analogous modern laws should be to gun laws of the founding period.”

In any case, this term the Court will decide two cases that may give the judges a chance to explain how brown‘s unusual historical test is supposed to work. The first, Wolford vs. Lopezis about a Hawaii law that requires gun owners to get permission from stores, restaurants and other private businesses before bringing a gun onto the premises. the second, United States v. Hemaniconcerns a federal law that prohibits an “unlawful user” of marijuana from owning a gun.

At oral arguments both casesmost of the judges probably struck down both laws. The most uncertain question is whether they can do so in a way that brings clarity to the extraordinarily murky reading brown framework.

One of the most stunning decisions of Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure at the head of the court was last March’s opinion in Mirabelli against Bonta (2026), where the Republican justices said that the Constitution requires public school teachers to send transgender students to their parents, even if the students want to keep their gender identity a secret.

As I explained shortly after it was handed over, Mirabelli is such a surprising decision because the Court relied on “substantive due process,” a controversial legal doctrine that was also the basis of the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wadeand it allows the Court to create “rights” that are not explicitly in the Constitution.

For decades, legal conservatism has defined itself by its opposition to substantive due process. The fact that the Republicans were willing to rely on this doctrine in Mirabelli suggests that their personal distance toward trans people has overcome their commitment to law enforcement in a predictable and consistent way.

Mirabelli conveyed little tension Small v. Hecox and West Virginia vs. BPJtwo pending cases challenging state laws barring transwomen student-athletes from playing on women’s sports teams. The Republican justices’ questions at oral arguments on these cases gave trans athletes little reason to be hopeful. Both Roberts and Judge Neil Gorsuch, the only Republican justices who have supported trans rights in the past, had skeptical questions for the attorney representing the athletes.

The plaintiffs in these cases always faced a difficult road in court. Although the Supreme Court held Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020) that laws prohibiting “sex” discrimination sometimes protect trans people from unequal treatment, gender discrimination is not prohibited in competitive sports. Indeed, sex discrimination is the entire reason women-only sports teams exist.

Given the Republican justices’ willingness to put anti-trans politics above legal principles Mirabelliit is difficult to imagine this Court going any further Bostock to maintain that trans athletes have the right to compete on the team that matches their gender identity.